distinguished: it is a fine thing to see the splendid vitality of all
this youth, whose force no harvest can diminish.


_December 15, morning._

I have had your dear letter of the 9th, in which you speak of our home.
It makes me happy to feel how fine and strong is the force of life which
soon adjusts itself to each separation and uprooting. It makes me happy,
too, to think that my letters find an echo in your heart. Sometimes I
was afraid of boring you, because though our life is so fine in many
ways, it is certainly very primitive, and there are not many salient
things to relate.

If only I could follow my calling of painter I could have recourse to
these wonderful visions that lie before me, and I could find vent for
all the pent-up artist's emotion that is within me. As it is, in trying
to speak of the sky, the tree, the hill, or the horizon, I cannot use
words as subtle as they, and the infinite variety of these things can
only be named in the same general terms, which I am afraid of constantly
repeating. . . .


_December 15._

One must adapt oneself to this special kind of life, which is indigent
as far as intellectual activity goes, but marvellously rich in emotion.
I suppose that in troubled times for many centuries there have been men
who, weary of luxury, have sought in the peace of the cloister the
contemplation of eternal things; contemplation threatened by the crowd,